1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a control method therefor, and a storage medium storing a control program therefor. And particularly, the present invention relates to security management when the apparatus is in hibernation.
2. Description of the Related Art
In information processing apparatuses, such as a personal computer (PC), since processes for enabling functions are added as the number of the functions increases, start-up time from power-on until the apparatus becomes available tends to get longer. A hibernation technology is cited as one of techniques to shorten the start-up time. When the hibernation technology is used, an information processing apparatus saves data that is stored in a volatile memory, such as a CPU register or a DRAM, on a nonvolatile memory, such as a hard disk, just before power-off, for example. Then, the apparatus writes the data saved on the nonvolatile memory back to the volatile memory at start-up. Thereby, since the operating state just before the power-off reappears, start-up time can be shortened as compared with cold boot that needs to initialize hardware and software.
However, when the whole data on the volatile memory is saved on the nonvolatile memory, confidential information may leak by extracting data from the nonvolatile memory and analyzing the data because confidential information may be included in the data concerned. In order to cope with such a problem, the technique that distributes the data saved on a nonvolatile memory using a secret sharing scheme is proposed (for example, see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2009-139990 (JP 2009-139990A)).
However, since it is rare that the whole data on the nonvolatile memory is confidential information, modifying data arrangement is accompanied by certain overhead.